I have a 3 year old ACER notebook (3200 series i think).
system specs (as far as i can tell):

intel celeron M 1.4 GHZ
128 mb video card
80 gig HD ----> Replaced now with brand new 120gig HD
125 mb ram + added 1gig ram = 1,125 gig ram
dvd/dvr cd drive
windows XP factory disks
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The laptop HD had been fried because the celeron gets super hot, and i lived in taiwan for a year (where its not cold either). For the rest the laptop worked fine, except for the HD causing freezes and loosing files to bad sectors etc.

I decided it was time to replace the HD with a new one, and prolong the life of my laptop for a while more.

I bought a 120 gig HD to replace the 80gig one.

After putting in the HD i put in the windows cd. I get to the install screen but then the laptop powers down completely. Sometimes it happens after 10 min, when im already running the install proccess for xp, sometimes it happens even sooner, but always before about 10 min. The notebook completetly shuts down.

I tried charging the battery (which probably has had its best time) but i still have the same issue. I figured it could be because it tries charging the battery which could be a little faulty after 3 years, so i tried without the battery just using the mains. It still shuts down.

Now it is not overheating, since the pc is not hot at all yet, and its gotten WAY hotter before (celeron is famous for it) before shutting down.

It is not the ram, i switched the chips around, i plugged in a spare ram chip (i had some brand new ones that i stored safely).

The strange thing is that i didnt have this shutdown problem before i put in the new harddisk.

Could the bios be configured so it doesnt accept hardware changes? if so, how can i fix that? Would it be best to replace the 80gig with 80gig HD? instead a 120? (i would find that strange but who knows).

Any suggestions are welcome. I will try installing xp on the faulty HD to see if it also shuts down, so we can eliminate the bios as a problem cause. Meanwhile anyone who has had this problem?

In research this issue has been posted by others with no resolution.

Acer gives very little help. It might have been possible that some part of the BIOS was on the old harddrive but I cannot confirm that.

Does the Setup get through the Format portion?

If not you might try Acer's format CD:

http://www.acerpanam.com/flex/acerdr...TOKEN=89956167

Choose: Notebook > TravelMate 3200 > Post Acer Disk Formatter CD ISO Image

Are you familiar with ISO's?

If not Nero uses the option: Create Disk Image.

If you do not have Nero here is a free ISO burning program:

ISO Recorder v 2

Hey jephree,

thanks for your reply.

I tried the other HD and it has the same issue now. So now i dont think it is the HD at all.

Suddenly I remember that i took off the CPU fan after switching the drives, just to check for dust underneath. Now i think i might have screwed up the thermal paste, that is between the chip and the fan. This might cause the heat sensor to shut it down quicker because it doesnt get a proper temperature reading. I am gonna buy some new thermal paste and see if that does the trick.